Copper CRM Review: AI-Based CRM for Enhanced Customer Relationships

Copper(formerly ProsperWorks) is the only CRM designed specifically for G Suite. We plug right into Gmail and the rest of the G Suite apps like Sheets, Drive and more ~ Jon Lee, founder of Copper, Google Apps CRM.

Jon Lee recently spoke to Forbes, explaining what Copper (formerly ProsperWorks) is and why he built this Google Apps CRM. Customer relationship is the focus of any and every business. If the customers are not managed, the business goes haywire! Hence, it is but natural that the CRM market value is growing manifold times. Last year in March 2015, the CRM market was totalled at $26.3 billion, up by 12.3 percent from 2014. As we near the closure of 2016, the CRM market value is estimated to reach $36.5 billion by 2017.

The reason I am talking about numbers is to lay an emphasis on one simple fact: You cannot do business without a CRM. Many traditional CRMs have already established their footprints. But today I will discuss Copper , a Google Apps CRM, that has been in the news for quite some time now.

Copper CRM Review: AI-Based CRM for Enhanced Customer Relationships 2

Copper is a ‘zero-data input’ CRM. Jon Lee says data input is one thing that Sales people hate. I couldn’t agree more with him. There isn’t a single soul who’d say they love to input data on a daily basis. Jon Lee goes on to explain how Copper stands out-

When viewing an email from a sales lead for example, Copper automatically recall all the sales interactions for that lead right from the inbox. Rather than going to another tab and searching by contact, information is delivered contextually in the slipstream of when you need it.

By making CRM data entry and recall more fluid, we give back countless hours to sales reps to focus on what they do best: selling

That precisely sums up why I am so keen on reviewing this tool in this guide.

Google Apps CRM – Copper in News

Before drilling down the features, integrations, pricing, and comparisons, here’s why Copper has been in the news recently-

  1. In March 2015, Copper raised a fund of $7.5 million to fuel the CRM technology that integrates solely with Google’s suite of productivity apps. True Ventures led it.
  2. In June 2016, Copper joined hands with Shivaami Cloud Services, a Google for work partner in India.
  3. Recently, in September, Copper yet again raised a series B funding of $24 million. This was led by Next World Capital, along with other investors like True Ventures, Storm Ventures, etc.

Copper entire concept revolves around Jon Lee’s unique idea- “What if we could make the CRM disappear?” Sales people spend the majority of their time in emails. How about having a functionality built right in your email? The answer is ProsperWorks. You do not need to input data because ProsperWorks synchronizes with your email and does it for you. Google cloud is growing fast. Having a CRM focused solely on Google cloud is a boon.

Copper : A Walk Through

Copper is the ONLY CRM for Google Suite. Google not just recommends this tool but also is a user as well.

prosperworks-jon-lee-quote

Talking about the features, of course, the first thing to discuss is how Copper is strictly built for Google apps. That is why I mentioned Copper as Google Apps CRM.

Features: An Overview

Almost every professional will resonate the fact that CRMs get confusing after a certain point of time. Although it helps in managing customer relationships, you cannot deny how difficult it gets in the long run. But not with Copper.

  • Copper ceases to be ‘hard’ at any given point of time. It is intuitive, simple, and easy to start.
  • Do you want to know where your sales team stands? Copper keeps everything transparent. It captures all the sales activities automatically and provides you with a minute to minute report.
  • If you think your team can do better than what they are doing currently, Copper will be at your aid leveraging your team’s potential throughout.
  • Collaboration is effortless. You can automate a sequence of steps for a particular task that everyone keeps following, or create a new one for others to collaborate.
  • Free 14-Day trial to start off with Copper .

Built for Google Suite (Apps)

Copper seamlessly integrates with Google apps ecosystem. Starting with Gmail to G-Drive and Calendars, Copper gives you unparalleled working experience. To break this down for you:

Google Apps CRM integration includes the entire G-App portfolio– Gmail, Calendar, Hangouts, and Drive. The Copper contact is automatically updated. Your emails, calendar events, and files get synced without having you to interfere.

It is not like Copper does things in a robotic fashion. Yes, I know its a tool that is programmed, but still, you can expect lesser mess from this tool. Copper recommends contacts that need to be added, avoiding any gaps between you and your customers. Should you choose to decline to add, you definitely can! The syncing is a ‘Two-Way Sync‘-

prosperworks two way sync Google Apps CRM
  • Copper uses PieSync Integration to offer sync between contacts in Copper and Google.
  • When you use PieSync with Copper, you can make changes to your Copper contacts or Google contacts without any worries. Whenever and wherever you make a change, it gets synced and updated throughout. For instance, a change in Google contacts is automatically updated in your ProsperWorks contacts.

Copper , Google Apps CRM offers Chrome extension so that work happens without having to sign in and sign out every day. Your entire sales pipeline can be easily managed. You can set it up in less than ten minutes without any help or guidance.

prosperworks-crm-chrome-extension

The highlights of this feature are:

  • See all the sales activities right within your Gmail.
  • Track the number of email open and viewing.
  • Automated data entry with zero-touch.
  • Task reminders to help you follow up with your tasks regularly.

The Custom report builder, Google Sheets Add-on, is the best thing. Copper  connects the data to your Google spreadsheets automatically. Hence, exporting dataset to create advanced reports or charts is easier than thought. Also, you can collaborate with your team as well.

prosperworks-spreadsheets

Data is the most valuable aspect in your CRM. With zero input data and custom report builder, you can get to a new level of analysis and insight. Gone are the days of copy-pasting data or updating columns and rows.

Sales Automation

Probably I have repeated this countless times now: Copper enters contact information for you, relieving you of all manual labors. Now, more the amount of information about a lead, better are the chances of conversion, isn’t it? Copper ensures that you get quality data about your leads, making way for establishing a better customer relationship.

prosperworks-contact-suggestions

Copper connects with your Google account and analyses your recent conversations. Based on this, it suggests new contacts that can be added. You have the liberty to add or skip the step. The idea is, Copper ensures you do not miss out on any lead. Instead of you surfing through your conversations or manually taking the initiative to add a contact once the conversation is made, Copper takes the hassle.

Suppose you accept to add the suggested contact. Once the contact is saved, Copper gets started with the next set of the task: populating all the available information about that contact, like phone numbers, professional experiences, origin, etc. It has been revealed that information derived from email signatures are a highly reliable and accurate source of information. Google Apps CRM – Copper acquires information majorly from the email signatures and social links mentioned in the signature.

The pipeline management feature helps in organizing and maintaining the sales pipeline efficiently. It is visually enriched and very easy to monitor. All you need to do is, just drag and drop your opportunities from one stage to the next. Yeah, almost the same we do on Trello.

You can create more than one pipeline, based on how many types of prospects you have. For instance, one pipeline can be for direct sales, and other for Onboarding. Not just sales, you can create pipelines for other business areas like marketing, PR, recruitment, and more.

Copper sales

You can create and manage multiple sales and business pipelines simultaneously. Copper analyses all the opportunities pipelines, and helps in creating robust reporting suites.

So, what after adding and streamlining leads? The next stage is getting productive with all the resources in hand. Copper lets you automate most of the manual tasks, leaving you with ample time to focus on the business growth.

The Email Tracking feature of Copper gives you a detailed insight of your emails- who, when and how many times your emails were opened. You will get live alerts when your tracked emails are opened and read. This gives you sales teams the chance to immediately reach out to that recipient.

The email tracking feature is completely integrated into your activity feed. This means that you can see your entire interaction history quickly.

Copper also has an automated task feature. This feature enables you to assign tasks to other users at any stage in the funnel. You will get a notification in your email about your pending tasks. This feature ensures that your efficiency and workflow is not hampered at any given point. This is how it is done:

  • The dashboard presents an overview of the entire activity feed.
  • Activities of everyone in the team can be seamlessly tracked.
prosperworks-activity-stream

Insights

The Google Apps CRM – Copper gives you accurate data and insights for better business decisions and actions. With the Acceleration toolset, you get the insights and structures needed to catalyze intelligent business decisions. Your decisions impact your team efficiency, and you get a bigger picture of where you stand regarding your goals.

prosperworks-insights

Goals: You can set different types of goals for each team member, like sales revenue opportunities, lead generation, calls, emails sent, etc. With an overview of the set goals, you can track your pace and determine the best possible way to hit the ‘finish’ line.

Leaderboard: Healthy competition is important to get things rolling. The Leaderboard lets you identify the high and low performers. You can use filters to compare teams. One who wins gets that ‘Flame’ icon and others keep working hard to earn it.

Leads Dashboard: You need to know where your leads are coming from, which are converting the best, where your leads are in the funnel, and what is the final status. Leads Dashboard has all of these in one place for you. You can even compare using filters like historical performance.

Sales Dashboard: Now this is like a performance scoreboard. You can see how your teams are performing and progressing towards the set goal. You can individually look at everyone’s performance chart.

Today Dashboard: This tells you what exactly each team member has on their ‘to-do’ list for the day, as well as know your own tasks. You get a consolidated view of the calendar date and focus on completing the tasks without delay.

Accurate data means detailed reporting. Copper lets you create various reports from the data gathered:

  • Pipeline reports that show your open and active opportunities.
  • Sales reports give a complete summary of closed (won, lost, or abandoned) opportunities. You can compare the history and makes forecast reports as well.
  • Activity reports that provide significant insight into your business via your default and customized activities.

Copper also has a custom report builder. With this, you can get better access and leverage your data for better business decisions. The custom report builder connects with Google sheets directly.

custom-report-building Google Apps CRM

Google Apps CRM for Every Business

It is a fact that Copper has tight integration with Google suite apps. These integrations cater to fast-growing startups as well as large enterprises, enabling businesses to create robust workflows with their favorite applications.

Native Integrations: Copper integrates with two of the most popular cloud services: Dropbox and MailChimp. There are many more native integrations in the pipeline.

MailChimp Integration

prosperworks-mailchimp-integration

With the native integration with MailChimp, you can easily add or remove contacts from MailChimp lists in few clicks. You can get an overview of the lists and campaigns your contacts are a part of; know the details of the last time an email was sent, and identify when will the next one go out.

Dropbox Integration

dropbox-prosperworks-integrations

You can easily upload and browse files by connecting Copper to Dropbox.

Other Native Integrations

Copper is working on expanding its horizon. The next in their roadmap is to add tools used for finances, accounting and customer service management.

Copper integrates with your existing systems as well, for instance, HR, Marketing, Accounting, etc.

Third-Party Integration with Zapier

The integration with Zapier indicates bi-directional integrations with hundreds of other popular cloud applications like Evernote, Slack, Wufoo, and so many more.

Copper  API

prosperworks-api

The Copper API has full documentation. You can work with this tool in more complex ways apart from the integrations. Here are the highlights:

  • Open, RESTful API
  • Robust and fully documented
  • Included in Professional and Business pricing plans

Word of Caution: Do not rip and replace Copper. Instead, you must connect your existing legacy systems to Copper to maintain one single source of truth for all your business data.

Copper Device & OS Compatibility

The Google Apps CRM, Copper is compatible with all your devices and is available for Android, iOS and as a Chrome extension. You can manage your entire sales pipeline right from your mobile devices (or tablets)-

  • Zero-touch data entry
  • In-app tap and dial feature
  • Automatic task reminders
  • Push notifications for new records assigned
  • Email notifications open directly in the mobile app

Copper Security & Trust

Data security is of the highest concern, and Copper offers tight security.

  • The synced emails are private by default. Only account owners and admins have the authority to view all synced emails and records.
  • Copper follows all of Google’s Cloud, OAuth, OpenID, API, and SSO practices. It supports cross-device, cross-platform, regionally-diverse deployment strategy.
  • Third-party security firms periodically test Copper to ensure and evaluate the security system. Copper has passed all tests with no significant vulnerabilities.
  • The data resiliency and backup management systems exceed industry standards,
  • Comprehensive policy on data confidentiality and incident management policy to handle critical events.
  • Tight access control policy for sensitive data, ensuring the internal protection of your data.

Copper Resources

prosperworks-resources

Copper – The Google Apps CRM has a comprehensive list of resources to help you from getting a lead to closing it. There are videos and demos, a robust content library, and a detailed Help and FAQ’s section.

Copper : Pricing Plans

Copper , The Google Apps CRM has three pricing plans: Basic, Professional, and Business plans. You can either choose to opt for a monthly mode or go for the annual mode of payment. If you choose an annual mode of payment, you can avail a 20 percent discount. 

You can try Copper ‘ 14-Day trial period before you start paying.

Copper pricing
Copper pricing

All the plans have these features in common:

  • Google integration
  • Mobile apps
  • Chrome extension
  • Basic integrations
  • Basic reporting
  • Online support
  • Sales forecasting

The Basic plan ($19/mo) can have up to 3 users, 2GB storage, 30,000 records, and five custom fields.

The Professional plan ($49/mo) and Business plan ($119/mo) have unlimited users, MailChimp Integration, Marketing automation integration, Task automation, API, Email open tracking, and more. The Professional plan offers 200 GB storage, 25 custom fields, and 100,000 records. These numbers increase to become 500GB storage, 100 custom fields and 500,000 records for the Business Plan.

Copper : Use Cases

Copper has numerous happy customers who have vouched for this tool time and again. When you have a renowned brand using and recommending a tool, your trust factor gets a huge boost. Copper has helped some popular brands. While Google is already recommending Copper for all its users, a popular MOOC platform Udacity has also benefited from using Copper .

Udacity is one of the early adopters of Copper . Since December 2014, this California-based education startup is using this smart CRM to build their sales process.

Udacity started offering Nanodegrees. These are compact degrees with series of projects. Students can add these projects to their portfolios to showcase to their employers. Recently, Udacity joined hands with Google to offer nanodegree in Android development.

How Copper helps?

Better sales is all about better data ~ Clarissa, VP of Business Development at Udacity.

Clarissa and her team were on a search for a lightweight CRM that will easily integrate with Gmail. Their search ended with Copper .

Copper does the data input automatically and provides an extensive analysis of those data. This ensures the high quality of the data or each prospective customer. The detailed insights have helped Udacity to organize, monitor and manage their customers. It is fast, efficient and has helped in making better decisions.

Other prominent names that use Copper include Longview Computer Center, CrowdRiff, Digitronik, Seismic, and many more.

Finally! A CRM that feels like it was built from the ground-up to work within Gmail! Loving the simplicity and the intuitiveness ~ Jeff Poulton, Founder & CEO at Rocketmade.

Google Apps CRM, Copper is a great tool, but that doesn’t mean it can escape comparisons. Among other popular CRMs, Zoho, Pipedrive, and Insightly are strong Copper alternatives.

Copper vs. Insightly

The first point of difference is that Copper is way better than Insightly for those who are Google dependent. A majority of users tend to choose Insightly due to its pricing plans (Free, to $99/user/mo) that are lower than Copper . Regarding security, Copper has more security features than Insightly. 

Copper caters to Enterprises as well, unlike Insightly. There are many difference in features and integrations. 

Copper vs Zoho

  • Platforms supported – Web-based, supports Android and iOS. Apart from that, Copper also supports Windows OS. 
  • The pricing plans of Zoho are lower than those of Copper .
  • Integrations – The integrations which are common between both of the products are:
    • Dropbox
    • Google Apps for work
    • MailChimp
    • Zapier
    • Campaign Monitor
    • Constant Contact
    • Facebook
    • Gmail
    • Twitter
  • Zoho CRM supports 123 integrations while Copper supports 18 integrations only. This doesn’t impact the popularity of Copper because it covers all the popular integrations which are used by in the industry.

Copper vs. Pipedrive

Copper beats Pipedrive regarding security and features. Pipedrive, on the other hand, takes over Copper with its longer integration list and lower price value.

Out of all these, only Zoho and Copper cater to Enterprises. And to be honest, Copper is far more feature enriched, clean and easy to use than Zoho. Unless you are worried about the $7 pricing difference, Copper is the best you can get.

Editorial Staff
Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff Team at Sprout24 is a team of Software Product experts, reviewers and analysts. Trusted by over a million readers across the globe.

17 Comments
Show all Most Helpful Highest Rating Lowest Rating Add your review
  1. ProsperWorks from google application is very useful but by itself, it does solve the quality of relationships with the clients. They are present only to help us achieve this relationship. Does Extreme not care about their customers before they introduced the Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution? Of course! It is not so today.

    • Peterson, almost all CRM does the relationship building quite well; and they are here for this reason first, to help you build and maintain relationship with your client / customer well.

  2. A company that cares about customers deservedly gets new clients and new clients generate more work for existing employees. That is how Google apps CRM reviews work!

  3. To quote you from your article -“ProsperWorks is the only CRM designed specifically for G Suite. We plug right into Gmail and the rest of the G Suite apps like Sheets, Drive and more ~ Jon Lee, founder of ProsperWorks, Google Apps CRM.”
    Why did Google choose to tie up with ProsperWorks? What makes it a cut above its competitors?

  4. This one is for the Salesman. I love it when you say, “nobody likes to input data on a daily basis” You say it is the ONLY CRM for Google Suite. Any other alternatives coming up?

    • Christina, I will be covering more google crm alternatives in coming weeks under new blog topics. Do subscribe to our news letter and you will get update.

  5. Hi Ankit. Nice Article. Just wanted to know that to what extent you found that it eased your workflow? Thank you..

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